First look: Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe 2 with Compiz Fusion

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Tribe 2—the second official Gutsy pre-release—was released last week. ISOs for the graphical Live CD installer are available for download for x86 and AMD64 systems and the terminal-based server installation ISO is available for x86, AMD64, and SPARC. I tested Tribe 2 in VMware and on my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop.

Tribe 2, which includes GNOME 2.19.4 and version 2.6.22 of the Linux kernel, is the first Ubuntu pre-release to install and enable compositing visual effects by default. Compiz Fusion is automatically enabled right out of the box on supported hardware. Even on my laptop, which has mediocre on-board graphics hardware, the visual effects work well and don't degrade performance. The default settings for Compiz Fusion are relatively conservative and aren't distracting. The wobbly window effect, for instance, is disabled and the default animations are all simple and elegant. The Desktop Wall plug-in (rather than the elaborate Cube effect) is used by default for virtual desktops. The Emerald window decorator is still available from the repositories, but the gtk-window-decorator, which uses Metacity themes, is enabled by default.

Although the settings for Compiz Fusion are all accessible through GConf, they are not yet exposed through Desktop Effects capplet, which currently only has a single "Enable Desktop Effects" toggle button and an "Enable extra effects" checkbox. Users who want to be able to configure Compiz Fusion settings (and turn on plugins like Wobbly Windows that aren't enabled by default) will have to install the compizconfig-settings-manager package from the Universe repository. I also recommend installing the compiz-fusion-plugins-extra package which provides additional plugins and visual effects. There are still some bugs in Compiz Fusion (I couldn't get the Zoom plugin to work properly, for instance) but the Ubuntu developers have really done an excellent job making the effects feel like a cohesive part of the computing experience rather than an extra layer of experimental eye-candy. Compiz Fusion is improving at a rapid pace, and the serious bugs will probably all be resolved in time for the official Ubuntu 7.10 release in October.